That's just a direct upgrade from Idol of Terror, and that's awesome...but it's a drop? And only from 25 man? Ugh. Maybe it'll be BoE or something. Yeah, right.

Onto the T8. The set bonuses are at best very lackluster for tanking. Clearcasting procs on bleeds are not particularly important for bears given bear rage generation normally. And 8 seconds of extra time on a 5-minute cooldown is not particularly interesting either, especially given how you would normally use 30% extra health. 30% extra health for 28 seconds sounds like a lot - but when do you actually use it for that whole length of time? It's very disappointing.

What isn't disappointing is the actual overall values of the T8 gear compared to the T7. In what's going to be screamed about for a bit, the T8 bonus is best for cats but the gear itself is likely much better for bears overall because of stat allocation. Here's the comparison between the full T7 and full T8:

Yeah, 93 extra agi for the whole set, not counting socket bonuses (which in two cases are on red sockets and are a total of +14 agi too). That's a big gain in overall value. AP has been itemized so much less that it's actually worse than T7. Small amounts of crit and armor pen. A bit more haste than I'd like. And less expertise, which is probably good given how easy it is to get expertise.

Just great stats for bears.

For cats? Not so much. The expertise loss is welcome, but not much crit doesn't help. Hit is nice to see, and more agi over stam is good - but my suspicion is that it'll be easier to get those non-set pieces for cats and get better stats.

If of course the set bonuses could be ignored, which they really can't. Sigh.

What's interesting is that the new T8.10 set follows this pattern almost more (compared to T7.25)agi: 58stam: 25armor: 24AP: -68crit: -9hit: 45haste: 39armor pen: 8expertise: -38

Again, a huge bump in Agi compared to all other stats, way less AP, less expertise, less crit, and a good chunk of hit. The T8.10 chest is going to be quite good just for that big hit bonus, as will the T8.25 chest.

9 comments:

Peter
said...

Thanks for the swift update. Yeah, whats with those appalling set bonuses for bears? Maybe its not finished yet - placeholders and all that. eg the warrior 2p bonus is reduced magic damage on shield block (=good) whereas their 4p is irrelevant for tanking. Time for some forum feedback, methinks.

Yeah, unless there is a fight where I'm taking over 20s of high magic burst I don't see the point of our 4p bonus. I'm just being a mana sponge for 8 second longer. The only time I use SI is when I feel I don't have the time for a heal and am near death.

The issue is, the SI is not damage reduction...I would be happy with dmg reduction. The longer barkskin was huge...I know they do not want to repeat bonuses, however, they really kind of knocked our best one out with T7 and has forced them to go with a lesser bonus for T8. I would rather them just give us the barkskin bonus again

The only problem i see with using t8 chest is, in the world of 2t7 and 2t8 which is projected to be the highest DPS atm, until we see a higher ilvl chest Recluse is extremely overbugdet (100 more ap but only 30 less agi and 1 less socket than the new 226 chest)

and unless they nerf recluse than I have a hard time justifying dropping it

although: i have yet to look at the new rings and this all depends on how long surge needle strong handed remain bis and how long grim toll will last (considering armor pen has been changing so much every patch this ptr)

Well, the reason they did this was to make bear gearing *more interesting*, not as a nerf or a buff. Our gear already has crit & attack power on, and now this means our defensive abilities are not only a function of agility & armor, but also of these traditional offensive abilities. We also start to scale better, without worrying about hitting the armor cap too soon. Its a great solution imo. Let me repeat: it was desgined to make gearing *interesting*, not to make us the "weakest" or the "strongest" tanks in the game.

So whether it compensates us is an open discussion: compensates according to what definition? The game was very easy in wrath for us hardcore. If its a nerf - is it really a nerf, or is it just making the game more challenging?

Interestingly, the people who whine about the game being too easy will turn around and whine about nerfs within the space of a single heartbeat. A lot of hardcore players are more addicting to whining than they are to wow! Check out healery, magery and dkery discussions for identical examples of this phenemonon.

The have been a lot of diskussion/yelling on the forum about which glypth was best for feral DPS. I have tryed to do some napkin math to figure out which of the glypth of shread and glypth of beserk was best AND just how good (or week) they are.

Disclaimer/assumption: The calculations is pure mathematical (i.e. the calculations is done with digits and not hole numbers as reality would demand)I assume that all the energy the glypht save will be use for shred.I assume that shread does 5000 damage (and cost 42 energy).I assume that the total DPS without glypths is 5000 DPS.I assume the fight is a boss fight lasting 10 min (600 seconds)Beserk: 1: I assume that we will have 0 energy after 15 seconds (the normal time of a beserk) 2: it is possible to use 4 beserks/boss fight (10 min). You can multiply the number for beserk with ¾ if you think 3 beserks/fight is more realistics.Shread:1: I assume glypth of shread will make rip last and addition 6 sec and that rip is refreashed everytime it runs out.

Conclusion: Glypth of shread will give a DPS boost of 1,98% if you are NOT using the t7 set bonus and 1,22% if you are using the t7 set bonus. Beserk will boost DPS by 0,79%.

My opinion: Concidering all the threats and yelling going on, I wish someone on the forum would have posted: Both glypth are equal (weak) yielding approximately a 1% DPS boost. Choose your glypth based on your playstyle. END OF STORY.

PS: The assumtion that shread does 5000 damage and that overall DPS is 5000 DPS is just assumtions. I dont know how realistic these numbers are and if someone can post more realistic numbers I can do the calculations again with those numbers.PPS: Dont flame – discuss:)

ThinkTank bio

About Me

Kalon likes playing tanks, no matter how hard he tries to fight it. He is not as hardcore as many but spends a lot of time thinking about WoW, and randomly rants about it now and then. He played formerly on the Argent Dawn (EU) server and was a founding member of Fire and Blood (Quel'Dorei) before joining Casually Serious, a guild devoted to hard core progression on only 8 hours of raiding time a week.
He is a devoted husband, father, and when he has the time programs software.